Spain’s 2023 Box Office: ’Barbenheimer’ Powers Total Revenues to 18% Below Pre-Pandemic Levels

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent After dropping on Netflix on Jan. 4 to the U.S. streaming giant’s second-biggest bow ever for a non-English language movie in hours watched, Spaniard J.A.

Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros/Village Roadshow/Heyday Films’ Wonka continues its sweet run, crossing the $500M mark globally this weekend. The worldwide cume through Sunday is $505.3M including $329.1M from the international box office and with Korea, which has a fondness for Hollywood musicals, still to release at the end of the month.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “The Simple Life,” the sixth movie of Oscar-shortlisted Abner Benaim, and “The Coast,” the directorial feature debut of “The Gypsy Bride” star Nerea Barros, both make their market debut at next March’s Malaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event (MAFF), one of the top forums for arthouse projects in the Spanish-speaking world. Proving the possibility to carve out an international film career based out of Panama, “The Simple Life” (“La Vida Simple”) marks the sixth feature from Benaim, Oscar shortlisted for “Plaza Catedral.” Marking a departure, “The Simple Life” looks like a more personal turn, about a film director, sans camera and crew, in Panama, compelled by unforeseen circumstances to live the very movie he’s longed to capture on film, suffering existential crisis.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Winner of a Spanish Academy supporting actress Goya Award for “Marshland” and nominated for a 2023 best doc short Spanish Academy Goya Award for “Memory,” which she also directed, Nerea Barros, star of “The Gypsy Bride” is preparing “The Coast” (“La Costa”) which will mark her directorial feature debut. Also written by Barros, “The Coast” will make its market debut in March at the 2024 Malaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event (MAFF). Its news comes little more than a month after the end of the run on Nov.

Globally, including most everywhere overseas, 2023 box office was led by a mix of Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Oppenheimer, curious bedfellows who nevertheless proved that cultural phenomena can come in different forms and set turnstiles spinning.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s box office revenue rose in 2023 to €495 million ($542,000) while the country’s admissions tally reached 70.5 million, representing a roughly 60% increase compared with 2022. Though Italian moviegoing figures – announced Wednesday in Rome by national box office compiler Cinetel – mark a substantial leap forward, they are still down roughly 23% compared with the country’s average box office intake during the period between 2017 and 2019. Prior to the pandemic, the benchmark of a good year was considered 100 million admissions.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Just after Spaniard J.A. Bayona’s Oscar-shortlisted “Society of the Snow” opened on Netflix to a massive 55.8 million hours watched over Jan. 4-7 – the second best bow ever in watching time for a non-English Netflix movie – ICEX Spain Trade & Investment, the country’s powerful export and inward investment board, has unveiled a new deal with Parrot Analytics.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Temps Noir, the French documentary production powerhouse behind Mediawan Rights sales hits “Kubrick by Kubrick” and “Cinecittà: Making of History,” has boarded “Passengers for the Last Trip,” the fiction feature debut of Cuba’s Marta María Borrás (“Atardecer en el Trópico”). It will hit Spain’s Malaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event (MAFF) this March as the most laureled of Latin America’s projects in the showcase.

Audiences didn’t have a lot of new choices, nor a mega late-December blockbuster to ring in the first weekend of the new year at the movies, but the studio titles on offer are still drawing crowds and seeing strong holds, particularly with ongoing holidays in many international box office markets. Milestones are also being set as Warner Bros/Village Roadshow/Heyday Films’ Wonka topped $300M overseas while Disney’s Wish crossed $200M worldwide and AMC touted a new benchmark for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. 

Naman Ramachandran The U.K. and Ireland box office revenue improved 8.3% from £980.5 million ($1.25 billion) in 2022 to £1.06 billion ($1.35 billion) in 2023, according to numbers released by Comscore. However, the number was 23.5% below the 2019 pre-pandemic total of £1.35 billion ($1.72 billion).

Global box office is estimated to have reached $33.9B for 2023, a 30.5% gain on 2022, according to Gower Street Analytics. While this represents continuing worldwide recovery, the figure remains 15% behind the average of the last three pre-pandemic years (2017-2019). Gower Street also recently estimated that, due in part to this year’s strike-impacted release calendar, 2024 is projected to drop to $31.5 billion, which, given today’s revised estimate for last year, would come in at 7% below 2023. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong saw “A Guilty Conscience” become the highest-grossing film of all time at its local box office. But the wider cinema market in Hong Kong remained stuck far below pre-pandemic levels. Data from Hong Kong Box Office Limited, a joint venture between Motion Picture Industry Association (MPIA) and the Hong Kong Theatres Association, showed annual cinema revenue of HK$1.43 billion ($184 million) in 2023. That was a 25% improvement on 2022, when the industry was battered by on-off closures due to government COVID-control measures, and managed only HK$1.14 billion ($146 million).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese-produced movies took all of the top ten chart places at the China box office as theatrical revenues in 2023 rebounded strongly. Gross revenues reached an annual total of RMB54.9 billion or $7.73 billion. That was an 83% improvement on the previous year, according to data from China Film Administration, but still 14.5% adrift of 2019, the last pre-COVID year, when grosses hit RMB64.3 billion.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A strong December for local films helped make up for an otherwise miserable 2023 at the South Korean box office – previously the fifth largest cinema territory worldwide. And while theatrical markets in other major territories have recovered to reach at or near pre-pandemic levels, Korea finished 44% below 2019. Data from the Korean Film Council’s Kobis tracking service showed annual gross revenues of KRW1.261 trillion ($964 million at Jan 2024 rates of exchange) in 2023. That represented a gain of 9% on 2022, but it was far below the KRW1.91 trillion ($1.46 billion) recorded in 2019, the last pre-COVID year. The bleak trend was mirrored in terms of attendance or ticket sales, which remains the country’s preferred performance measure.

Korean historical action drama 12.12: The Day has grossed $90.5M and sailed past the 12 million admissions mark at the Korean box office over the Christmas holiday period to become the highest grossing film of 2023. 

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Thanks to Mario, J. Robert Oppenheimer and M3GAN, Universal Pictures ranked as the highest-grossing studio at the 2023 box office. The company’s slate — a range of 24 films that included “The Super Mario Bros.

French exhibitors can start 2024 with renewed confidence as new figures released by the National Cinema Center (CNC) show that audiences are heading back to the big screen.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The French box office jumped 19% in 2023 with an estimated €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) grossed from 181.2 million tickets, according to Comscore France. Unlike in 2022, when the top 10 was exclusively dominated by U.S.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Wonka,” a musical fantasy that has been the biggest hit of the holiday season, topped the box office on New Year’s Eve, closing 2023 on a sweet note. The film, which stars Timothée Chalamet as a more youthful Willy Wonka, grossed $22.7 million for the weekend and a projected $29.5 million for the four-day holiday. That brings the domestic gross to $140.2 million, a strong result for the $125 million production.

MONDAY AM writethru: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he’s delivering the motion picture industry a $9 billion-plus year at the domestic box office, a feat many thought was unimaginable with the lack of a mega-tentpole over the holiday, coupled by a Q4 impacted by the double strikes. The numbers were compiled from Comscore data and Deadline calculations. Comscore called 2023 at $9.03 billion yesterday.